Outside View: Perhaps it's not her man Huma stands by

HERNDON, Va., Aug. 6 (UPI) -- Huma Abedin -- wife of candidate for New York City mayor and disgraced former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y. -- is confounding political analysts.

Why, after her husband recently admitted on the campaign trail he had continued his sexting exploits subsequent to resigning from office in 2011, would she continue to stand by her man. There may be something much more valued to Abedin than a psychotic husband causing her to do so.

If one drew lines from opposite ends of a graph to illustrate U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East under U.S. President Barack Obama and Abedin's increasing influence with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, convergence occurs with a major change in such policy. An earlier effort to explore Abedin's influence was curbed by supporters waving the flag of political correctness, suggesting her ties to Islam and certain questionable organizations remained off limits for discussion.

It is important to understand Abedin's "bloodline." While it shouldn't be taken as an indictment of her beliefs, it does reflect possible influences at an early age molding her core belief system. It is the direction she chose to go once emancipated, however, that is telling about the impact family influences may have had in honing her core beliefs.

A July 24 National Review article addresses this bloodline.

To understand it, we begin with Abdullah Omar Naseef, a Saudi supporter of the late Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.

A staunch Islamic extremist, Naseef founded a think tank, the Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs, in 1978. He recruited Abedin's father, Zyed Abedin, an educator born in India and living in the United States, to assist in the effort in Saudi Arabia.

As reported by investigative journalist Andrew McCarthy, even today IMMA's focus remains on promoting the Saudi Ministry of Religious Affairs' foreign policy "to grow an unassimilated, aggressive population of Islamic supremacists who will gradually but dramatically alter the character of the West."

Naseef also co-founded the Rabita Trust, established in 1988, allegedly for charitable purposes but later found to be funding terrorist groups. The United States designated Rabita a foreign terrorist organization, freezing its assets in 2001.

IMMA later published a journal, for which Zyed Abedin was editor. Although Zyed Abedin ran JMMA, Naseef influenced it via his relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, "a virulently anti-Semitic and Shariah-supremacist organization" that managed the publication. When Zyed Abedin died in 1993, his Pakistani wife, Huma's mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, took control.

Saleha Abedin is a promoter of the Muslim Brotherhood and violent jihad. She directs an organization -- the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child linked to the Union for Good -- also an FTO. The union is headed by Muslim Brotherhood's Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi who, during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, ordered fatwas against U.S. troops. Allegedly a women's rights activist, Saleha Abedin promotes those "rights" as defined by Shariah law, thus justifying the abuse of wives, female genital mutilation and other repressive horrors.

Born in the United States, Huma Abedin was raised Muslim in Saudi Arabia. She returned to the United States to attend college at George Washington University in 1994. There she became an executive board member of the Muslim Student Association, a national organization and foundation of Muslim Brotherhood's U.S. network. The MSA has an indoctrination program "designed to ensure with absolute certainty that there is conformity to the movement's ideology and a clear adherence to its leadership's authority."

Of note too is that in early 2001, the late American-born terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki became GWU's MSA spiritual guide, while simultaneously counseling some of the 9/11 terrorists.

McCarthy notes, "MSA gave birth to the Islamic Society of North America, the largest Islamist organization in the U.S. Indeed the MSA and ISNA consider themselves the same organization. Because of its support for Hamas (a designated terrorist organization that is the Muslim Brotherhood's Palestinian branch), ISNA was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, in which several Hamas operatives were convicted of providing the terrorist organization with lavish financing."

In 1996, Huma Abedin became a White House intern working for first lady Hillary Clinton. They formed a close bond resulting in Abedin becoming Clinton's chief of staff during her 2008 presidential campaign run and her top staffer and adviser when Clinton became secretary of State in 2009.

Having ties to Islamic extremist influences, Abedin should have been thoroughly investigated for a position requiring a high-level security clearance. But, again, inexplicably, she was cleared with minimal vetting.

Abedin married Weiner, who is a Jew, in July 2010. Interestingly, while Islam permits Muslim men to take non-Muslim spouses, it prohibits Muslim women from doing so. Thus, such a union should have generated outrage from a Muslim world prone to lash out over anything. But strangely, nothing was heard -- not even from Abedin's Islamist mother.

Two years after the Clinton-Abedin team took office, the United States made a major change in its foreign policy toward the Muslim Brotherhood. In June 2011, it threw its ally, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, under the bus, embracing the Muslim Brotherhood -- with whom all communication had previously been suspended due to its suspected terrorist activities -- and several of its positions contrary to U.S. interests.

With Clinton's departure from State, Abedin may only temporarily be out of the classified information loop. Standing by her man may well be driven by her desire to get back into it, hitching a ride either on Clinton's 2016 presidential bid train or the constantly derailing Weiner train she still hopes may lead to higher office.

But that desire may well be Muslim Brotherhood-driven.

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(A retired U.S. Marine, Lt. Col. James Zumwalt served in the Vietnam War, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War. He has written "Bare Feet, Iron Will -- Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam's Battlefields," "Living the Juche Lie: North Korea's Kim Dynasty" and "Doomsday: Iran -- The Clock is Ticking.")

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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

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